The Under-Told Story of How Santorum Became a Crusader for the Religious Right
With his narrow defeat in Ohio on Tuesday night, Santorum missed his chance to send Mitt Romney reeling, and to become the arguable front-runner for the Republican nomination. But Santorum didn’t fare poorly enough to slink off and call it a campaign. The former Pennsylvania Senator has made clear that he’s staying in the race, especially as it heads into a batch of Southern states where Romney, who fares best among well-educated, high-income, non-evangelical Republicans—might find a lukewarm reception.
And as long as he sticks around, Santorum is sure to keep steering the political conversation towards the issues of religion, morality and sexual mores that have come to define his political identity, but which may be causing the Republican party severe damage with the moderate swing voters they’ll need to beat Barack Obama this fall. And don’t discount the possibility that Newt Gingrich drops out of the race, suddenly creating a head-to-head contest between Romney and Santorum (with Ron Paul nibbling at the margins) that could spell Rommey’s doom.
So how did Rick Santorum come to be such a fervent cultural warrior? The answer is interesting, and revealing of why he’s unlikely to give up his crusade anytime soon. In this week’s issue of TIME, now available online to subscribers, I look at Santorum’s surprising transformation from a young partisan rabble-rouser to a man who suggests he is on nothing less than a divine mission to rescue American society from Satanic influences. “It’s sort of a process,” he said of his spiritual awakening in an interview on the eve of Super Tuesday. “I’m not a road to Damascus kind of guy.” Santorum acknowledges that he was nearly five years into his Washington career before he mentioned the word abortion in an official speech. “I had been one of those guys who was Catholic and pro-life, but… when that issue was being discussed, I’d just leave the room,” he told me.